ATI drivers going open source!

[NoTiG]

sry if this has been posted already. we have all heard rumors when ATI was acquired by AMD that this would be so. it looks like it is going to be true now.

http://enterpriselinuxlog.blogs.techtarget.com/2007/05/09/amd-will-deliver-open-graphics-drivers/

AMD will soon deliver open graphics drivers, said Henri Richard just a few minutes ago, and the audience at the opening keynote of the Red Hat Summit broke into applause and cheers. Richard, AMD’s executive vice president of sales and marketing, promised: “I’m here to commit to you that it’s going to get done.” He also promised that AMD is “going to be very proactive in changing way we interface with the Linux community.”

The open sourcing of graphics drivers will indeed be good news, but it’s not a big surprise. After AMD acquired graphics driver maker ATI last year, an announcement that AMD would be opening up graphics drivers has been anticipated. The other shoe has dropped, and the folks at the Summit in San Diego are very happy. Now, the new question is “when?” Richard didn’t say.

Well, in a webcast last week Richard told the world that AMD would be delivering Vista drivers, too, and supporting it with gusto. According to the blog, istartedsomething.com:

“First Henri announced that AMD will be rolling out a gold master image of Windows Vista for deployment throughout the company as a sign of their confidence over the stability and performance of Windows Vista with a combination of their hardware and software support.”

AMD’s got a lot of supporting to do.

[jiminycricket]

I wonder if they'll let Dave Airlie release his 2d driver patch (http://airlied.livejournal.com/31180.html) for the X**** drivers then?

[DoctorMO]

When the drivers (parts there of) are distributed with linux inside the distro and licensed under gpl the chances are that code quality and out of the box working will be high on the agenda of all developers.

As for nVidia, well they have good drivers but you can't beat 'just works' and more linux people will buy ati in future and more laptop makers and desktop makers will buy ati for their linux computers.

[SZF2001]

All I can really say is...

HOLY HOT DOG IN A BASKET I CAN'T BELIEVE ITS NOT BUTTER WHO LET THE DOGS OUT WUT TEH MOOT BLORGH.

I am thrilled, as you can see.

[Lucifiel]

Smart move, man! :D

[gnomeuser]

I'll believe it when I see it but if they open development in a sane way, hopefully by providing specifications and source code then I'll be very pleased indeed.

[H.E. Pennypacker]

This sounds too good to be true, and I am not even an ATI card owner.

[PatrickMay16]

Sounds good... Two years later when I build a new system, I'll get an ATI card if they've started releasing the open drivers by then.

[Polygon]

wow... i wonder if this is true or not.... but if it is, then thats just amazing.

[misfitpierce]

All I can really say is...

HOLY HOT DOG IN A BASKET I CAN'T BELIEVE ITS NOT BUTTER WHO LET THE DOGS OUT WUT TEH MOOT BLORGH.

I am thrilled, as you can see.

Couldnt have said it better :)

[SoloSalsa]

I did not hear this, thanks.
W00T! Pardon my company fanboyism, but, I consider this the best (only) good thing AMD has ever done! Ati is so better than Nvidia, except for their support. Hah, not any more!
But, do you think this will be full support? There is little compatibility for really legacy stuff (like the Rage 2/AllInWonder graphics/capture combo card, which I used to love).

[igknighted]

Wow, my x800GTO just got a whole lot more valuable... glad I kept that puppy :).

PS, I don't want to say I told you so, but I've been saying for months to just give AMD time to straighten this crap out and something really good would come of it... like, well, this.

[EdThaSlayer]

:lolflag:
Another ATI joke. Very funny, it made me laugh.

[allix]

April fools!! :lolflag:

Oh wait... isn't that over a month late? Hmm... I'll believe it when I see it.

[DC@DR]

Damn, I can't wait this dream to come true. I really hate those fglrx drivers. The question now is: When they're gonna go opensource? Next month, next quater, next year....??? :-?

[3rdalbum]

I can't wait! Open-source ATI drivers would be awesome for out-of-the-box support, and it also means that they wouldn't drop support for older cards (not necessarily).

[Nikron]

Do'h I already got an nvidia laptop..

Probably still a good decision because those ATI drivers wont come out for another couple of years..

[allix]

I noticed that the date of publishing was May 9th, 2007. Why hasn't any of the largerr newssites picked this up?

[jiminycricket]

It seems that it's only going to be useful for render farms or something, not really 3d.

BTW ATI has made many promises like this dating back to the 90s with their All in wonder cards...they're very much a joke in that respect.

[Adamant1988]

It seems that it's only going to be useful for render farms or something, not really 3d.

BTW ATI has made many promises like this dating back to the 90s with their All in wonder cards...they're very much a joke in that respect.

I agree, although there are several possible motives now for ACTUALLY following through:

AMD/ATi are failing and need to get a leg up on Nvidia in this market.
By opensourcing their drivers they become THE throat to choke for 'good' 3d graphics cards for Linux. If they actually follow through, no one in their right mind would buy an Nvidia card over an ATi card.

Maybe they're not going to do this at all
It could just be hype, maybe they're going to open source amazing 2d drivers or something. If it doesn't do 3d then it doesn't matter...

As the owner of several ATi graphics cards, I am watching this with interest.

[Sef]

AMD/ATi are failing and need to get a leg up on Nvidia in this market.
By opensourcing their drivers they become THE throat to choke for 'good' 3d graphics cards for Linux. If they actually follow through, no one in their right mind would buy an Nvidia card over an ATi card.


Unless of course Nvidia open-sourced their video drivers.


BTW ATI has made many promises like this dating back to the 90s with their All in wonder cards

AMD is much more receptive to open source than ATi.

[Adamant1988]

Unless of course Nvidia open-sourced their video drivers.

Which they may be effectively doing with the renouveau project, there have been rumors about Nvidia quietly helping the project under the table. We'll see how this plays out.

[jrusso2]

I hope this means the ATI drivers will improve by being open. ATI has opened their drivers before and those drivers are still around and never were any good.

Intel opened their video drivers yet those are not very good.

What gives?

[Adamant1988]

I hope they'll do more than throw some specs and code at us and tell us to have fun. I would like to see a company ACTIVELY DEVELOP with the community...

[gnomeuser]

I noticed that the date of publishing was May 9th, 2007. Why hasn't any of the largerr newssites picked this up?

Likely because this was all based on comments made at the Red Hat Summit, I think outside the community everyone is waiting for an official statement stamped by ATI.

[Extreme Coder]

This is the shiznit!
They better also release the source to the bit older cards, like from Radeon 7500 to Radeon 9200. My other gripe with fglrx(other than it being crappy) is that ATI decides to drop support for cards produced 1 hour ago. Atleast nVidia still supports the GeForce 4xxx and 5xxx till now.

Extreme Coder

[jiminycricket]

I hope this means the ATI drivers will improve by being open. ATI has opened their drivers before and those drivers are still around and never were any good.

Intel opened their video drivers yet those are not very good.

What gives?

Actually the free ATI drivers are good. Can you believe that they support AIGLX :) Cards as old as the 7200 can claim that thanks to Xorg hackers.

fglrx can't claim that. legacy nVidia cards can't either.

[earobinson]

They have said this before and it has never happend, Ill beleave it when I see the code.

[Polygon]

They have said this before and it has never happend, Ill beleave it when I see the code.

are you referring to the time when amd first acquired ati and there were lots of rumors saying that amd was going to open source the ati drivers? Cause amd said quite clearly back then that they couldent cuase the drivers had third party parts in it and they couldent open source those.

[borris.morris]

SWEET!!! Was getting really ticked off at ATI. Now (hopefully) I'll be able to use my Radeon 9250 (haven't had the money for a new card).

[jiminycricket]

They've said they fully support Linux in news releases several times...in the past have talked about open sourcing things like their "control panel" app.

BTW the driver developers just need the specs, I don't think fglrx code is really wanted by them since it only gets 1/3 of Windows 3d rates anyways and doesn't support the new X extensions.

[maniacmusician]

Don't forget that nVidia still has better OpenGL rendering than ATI. I call BS on this right now. If these drivers ever get opened, which I highly doubt, it's still no secret that ATI focuses on DirectX features and gives OpenGL whatever attention is left over after that.

[theicyj]

This is the greatest news I have heard in a long time. I can't wait till my x1600 pro works nice with Ubuntu!

[jrusso2]

Actually the free ATI drivers are good. Can you believe that they support AIGLX :) Cards as old as the 7200 can claim that thanks to Xorg hackers.

fglrx can't claim that. legacy nVidia cards can't either.

I tried to run the free ATI drivers and they are awful the card ran games in slow motion. Even the GL screensavers ran slow mo

[Rhapsody]

If they really do make proper open source drivers (no tricks, and I want proper 3D acceleration), then I'll be seriously considering an ATI card for my next PC. But that's only if Intel can't make me a better offer. Also, if ATI they decide they'd rather not make proper open source drivers, then what possible reason would there be for me to choose them over the patently superior NVIDIA products?

[igknighted]

I tried to run the free ATI drivers and they are awful the card ran games in slow motion. Even the GL screensavers ran slow mo

Depends on your card. And how much tweaking you did to them. Mine runs slow until I turn up the AGP speed and many other tweaks. Also, it does not handle gaming well, but things like beryl run really well (except for rain last I checked :)). So it is hit or miss, but overall they are doing a great job. Depending on you needs and specific card, the open drivers can provide a better experience or a worse one, so its worth giving the open one a shot first (as it's already there and if you go fglrx first it can ruin the mesa3d libraries that the open driver needs...)

[KuriKai]

well, when they open source their drivers I will be only buying ati cards.
good on you AMD^^

[WalmartSniperLX]

Can't wait. Ati already releases a little bit of source for community projects (unlike nVidia who doesn't release any source at all). Now, how long will it take for this to go into effect?

I just changed out my ati card for an nvidia 7300LE. It's a cheap geforce card but I love nvidia's driver support. I wonder if nvidia will do the same. But, I don't think it matters. Their drivers are extremely good considering Linux is non-profit unlike MSW and MOSX (I just made up those acronyms :P so don't go after me for using improper ones)

Go AMD!

[PrimoTurbo]

I hope this means that my 9700 Pro can preform the same or better then Windows. It could also mean driver optimization.

[siimo]

SWEET!!! Was getting really ticked off at ATI. Now (hopefully) I'll be able to use my Radeon 9250 (haven't had the money for a new card).

Dude.

Seriously.

Are you living under a rock?

This card has had open source drivers in Xorg for atleast a couple of years now if not more. They work faster than the last release of ATI fglrx that supported the card. I run Quake 3 and also AIGLX no problems at all using the radeon driver in Xorg.

[siimo]

I tried to run the free ATI drivers and they are awful the card ran games in slow motion. Even the GL screensavers ran slow mo

Get driconf http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/DriConf and turn on Hyper-Z and Page Flipping. It will improve your performance greatly.

[High Roller]

This all seems like they're trying to get some ink.

It appears really vague and there's been no press release or anything that would indicate their intentions.
They could come in on Monday and say they only meant 2D... We'll have to wait and see what they're proposing and not get our hopes up until then.

If they did decide to become completely open source I would drop my nVidia card in a heartbeat. But I somehow doubt that I will be swapping out any graphics cards in the near future. It would seem like they'd be "opening" themselves up to liability...

But here's hoping they're true in the spirit of becoming open with these drivers! A lot of people would love them for it :)

[Lux Perpetua]

Given that they say on their website that they are prevented from releasing an open-source driver by non-disclosure agreements with other companies, I wonder what AMD really has in store for us. However, the prospect of this even maybe happening is exciting.

[WalmartSniperLX]

Yeah this is something we should really keep and eye or ear out. Who knows what tricks they have up their sleeves since releasing certain parts of the code can cause a company trouble within the competition. But, I look forward to this, especially since the new cards are out/coming out.

[gnomeuser]

Given that they say on their website that they are prevented from releasing an open-source driver by non-disclosure agreements with other companies, I wonder what AMD really has in store for us. However, the prospect of this even maybe happening is exciting.

Likely they have no yet been able to update their website to match the statements made at the Red Hat Summit. I would still like something firm like a press release saying they'll do this but so far since it was mentioned at a keynote I think we can rest assured that something is going to change at least.

[Arathorn]

AMD will have to replace the third-party components of the driver before open-sourcing them, so I don't expect anything soon. Perhaps the time it took Sun to open-source Java is a good indication of how long it will take?

[jiminycricket]

This all seems like they're trying to get some ink.

It appears really vague and there's been no press release or anything that would indicate their intentions.
They could come in on Monday and say they only meant 2D... We'll have to wait and see what they're proposing and not get our hopes up until then.

If they did decide to become completely open source I would drop my nVidia card in a heartbeat. But I somehow doubt that I will be swapping out any graphics cards in the near future. It would seem like they'd be "opening" themselves up to liability...

But here's hoping they're true in the spirit of becoming open with these drivers! A lot of people would love them for it :)

I agree, see this interview AMD did on March 13, 2007:

http://liquidat.wordpress.com/2007/03/13/amdati-linux-interview-with-terry-makedon-the-head-of-software-development/


Anyway, opening the drivers is no alternative for Makedon: first of all there is too much 3rd party technology in the drivers “like for example compression algorithms”. The 3rd party companies certainly wouldn’t allow AMD to release that source code.
Second there is too much IP in the drivers. He compares the situation with McDonalds which will not release the recipe to the sauce of the BigMac also: “It is just not economically justifiable to do that.”
Also, an NDA like Intel uses is not possible because - according to Makedon - there is not “so much 3D intelligence” inside the Intel drivers.
However, he adds that the 2D part is already open source and that there are discussions to also release other parts like the install routines as open source as well. He cannot say never, but that AMD will not take this path for at least the next 6 till 12 months.

[jiminycricket]

I tried to run the free ATI drivers and they are awful the card ran games in slow motion. Even the GL screensavers ran slow mo

They were reverse engineered after lots of hard work. If ATI gave them the specifications they would have better performance probably, and support not-ancient cards. :)

The fact remains that you can run Compiz out of the box on them and you don't get weird suspend problems that so many on this forum complain about.

[yatt]

I agree, although there are several possible motives now for ACTUALLY following through:

AMD/ATi are failing and need to get a leg up on Nvidia in this market.
By opensourcing their drivers they become THE throat to choke for 'good' 3d graphics cards for Linux. If they actually follow through, no one in their right mind would buy an Nvidia card over an ATi card.

Maybe they're not going to do this at all
It could just be hype, maybe they're going to open source amazing 2d drivers or something. If it doesn't do 3d then it doesn't matter...

As the owner of several ATi graphics cards, I am watching this with interest.

Something you missed. Intel will be doing it. AMD's big rival has plans to release discrete graphics next year, and they'll have open source drivers.

That said, I've read that Henri Richard never said open-source, just open.

[saulgoode]

AMD will have to replace the third-party components of the driver before open-sourcing them, so I don't expect anything soon. Perhaps the time it took Sun to open-source Java is a good indication of how long it will take?

I'm not so sure it will take that long. There will be many Linux/BSD users putting off their graphic adapter purchasing to see for which cards ATI will have open drivers available. This will be especially true for those who are already loyal to ATI -- any delay in supporting open drivers will be harmful to their sales.

[High Roller]

This news article suggests that the open source drivers will be for their new line of cards. But they don't provide any reference to the claims so I would suggest it is mere speculation.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070514-amd-launches-the-hd-2000-series.html


People who really want to max out the R600 will write directly to the GPU hardware using CTM, bypassing the ACSS entirely. This is probably behind AMD's recent promise to open source the R600 drivers—they may be hoping that developers will step up and use CTM to write card-specific drivers that are fully optimized, game-console-style, so that all of the R600's potential can be unlocked.

It could also be the case that AMD themselves will write OpenGL and DirectX drivers that run directly on the GPU using CTM.

[borris.morris]

Dude.

Seriously.

Are you living under a rock?

This card has had open source drivers in Xorg for atleast a couple of years now if not more. They work faster than the last release of ATI fglrx that supported the card. I run Quake 3 and also AIGLX no problems at all using the radeon driver in Xorg.

it didnt seem to work for me.

[High Roller]

This is an interesting blog that I picked up on. David Airlie (http://www.skynet.ie/~airlied/) (airlied (http://airlied.livejournal.com/)) apparently wrote an open source driver for the r500 but sought clarification from ATI to release it due to using "a utility they gave me under NDA on those cards" and has been stonewalled ever since.

http://airlied.livejournal.com/43520.html


AMD/ATI drivers media grab
5/15/07 07:43 pm

So a marketing dude said something about open drivers for AMD/ATI gpus and working with the community.

Can people get excited when AMD/ATI actually do something rather than showboat for media headlines?

Like ATI won't let me release my r500 source because I shouldn't have used a utility they gave me under NDA on those cards, now the thing is I done the correct thing and contacted them asking if I could release the code, so far this has just been stonewalled by their Linux driver management and their "legal" department, this isn't the action of a company trying to interact with the community or one that gives a rats **** about community..

Something most people may not know is that ATI do have engineering resources to support the open source driver, we get patches to it via Novell or RH every so often, these patches are invariably of dubious quality and are to fix Dell or IBM servers, however in fixing Dell or IBM they invariably break at least one other working platform if not more, again this is not interacting with the community this is pushing code via vendors who don't really understand the intricacies of the driver...

Maybe if ATI/AMD fix the above two things I might believe they are interested in working with the community... or even if someone from either side of the conglomerate was to contact me and ask how they could work with the open source driver going forward...

The author maintains he didn't break the NDA.

http://airlied.livejournal.com/43975.html


did I violate any agreement with ATI?
5/16/07 03:48 pm

Someone commented on my previous post that ATI had stopped talking to me as I had violated my NDA,

THIS IS HORSE **** AND ANYONE SPEADING IT SHOULD TALK TO ME FIRST

ATI give OEMs a register dump tool for Windows no matter what cards you sign up for info on you get the same tool which contains info for all cards.. I did run this tool on r500 cards and wrote some code to set modes. I knew releasing that code would violate the NDA so i contacted Matthew Tippett in ATI who manages their Linux driver team with a full explanation of what I had done to see if we could work out a solution and nothing ever came of it after some initial conversations.

I initially thought about offering a binary driver for testing but that also may have violated the NDA. but ATI were not sure of this when I asked so i removed it.

Also as far as I'm aware the NDA is still in place i.e. the OEM still has access (granted for other reasons they dont use ATI but Intel now) which if I had violated it I would assume they would have terminated it by now.